In 2006, Kira Wampler became Intuit’s first word-of-mouth marketing manager. While at Intuit, Wampler, who’s now at Lytro, performed duties including launching branded social media channels, running integrated marketing campaigns and leading the company’s online customer community.

And throughout it all, Wampler faced a question that many marketers face: How do you measure this stuff?

At our last Word of Mouth event, Wampler described how she was able to measure word-of-mouth and social media efforts and how she communicated results to senior leadership.

A few of her key tips:

Do the basics to measure direct product adoption. Wampler said so many of us forget the basics: including social media URLs in existing dashboards, using coupon codes and putting ads in our communities (if they’re big enough and you do it right). Even if you have a small fan base, this will help you get started.

Always tie what you’re measuring to what matters. Wampler shared an example of a dashboard from an integrated campaign that included social media. She emphasized the importance of how the dashboard focused on what mattered to the company: product adoption, brand engagement and positive sentiment for the brand. Before you start measuring, ask yourself, “What really matters? What’s the goal here?”

Work social into existing measurement techniques. Wampler talked about how you can add simple questions to surveys that you’re probably already sending to ask customers how word of mouth and social media affect their purchase decisions. The key here, Wampler said, is to not think of social media as some other entity but as a standard part of business that should be measured.